Billy Budd

… These roses of divers hues, red, yellow, pink, and white, the black slave, a clean-limbed adolescent, and comely for all his flat nose; he, before offering them to My Lord to refresh him with their colour and scent, did, at the Azem’s bidding, drop them into a delicate vase of amber; and so cunningly, withal, that they fell as of themselves into the attitude of young damsels leaning over the balustrade of a dome and gazing downward; so that the vase itself was all but hidden from view, at least, much of the upper part thereof, where I noted that certain relievos were, though truly I could get but a peep thereof at that time.

On the next day but one repairing to the same villa where the Azem made abode for that month, and there waiting to convey a reply to a missive from My Lord; I saw by chance on a marble buffet the same vase then empty; and going up to it, curiously observed the relievos, before hidden by the flowers. They were of a mystical type, methought, something like certain pictures in the great Dutch Bible in a library at Oxon, setting forth the enigmas of the Song of the Wise Man, to wit, King Solomon. I hardly knew what to make of them; and so would as lief have seen the roses in their stead. Yet for the grace of it, if not the import, whatever that might be, was I pleased with a round device of sculpture on one side, about the bigness of My Lord’s seal to a parchment, showing the figure of an angel with a spade under arm like a gardener, and bearing roses in a pot; and a like angel-figure, clad like a cellarer, and with a wine-jar on his shoulder; and these two angels, side by side, pacing toward a meagre wight, very doleful and Job-like, squatted hard by a sepulchre, as meditating thereon; and all done very lively in small.

But the thing that meseems was most strange was the amber wherein this device and sundry other inventions were cut; for in parts it held marvellously congealed within its substance certain little relics of perished insects, as of the members of flies on frozen syrup or marmalade. Never had I seen the like thereof before; and My Lord, to whom that night I spoke of it, as he was drinking his posset, about the time of his retiring, he instructed me that that sort of amber was of the rarest, and esteemed exceeding precious, and spoke of a famous piece in the Great Duke’s museum at Florence; and much wished that the Azem had given him that vase in place of the jewelled scimetar you wot of. ‘And Geoffry,’ quoth My Lord somewhat eagerly, ‘didst thou note that the vessel was of one whole piece or in two parts, the bowl part and the standard?’ But verily I could not answer to purpose here, for I did in no wise handle the vase; and I doubt had the jealousy of the attendants permitted it; so that, were there any junction of two or more parts, right deftly was the same hidden by the craft of the artificer.

It befell that at the next coming together of My Lord and the Azem, which was about that stale affair of the two factors at Aleppo; My Lord after that business, and when their black drink, coffee, had been offered us in little cups of filigree, fine as My Lady’s Flanders lace, and great jasmine-stemmed pipes, two yards long, likewise, as is their ceremonious custom; My Lord, I say, holding the amber mouthpiece before him, shaped somewhat like a lemon, and of a wondrous clear tint much the same, and of a diameter not behind, for among these people the higher the rank or the longer the purse, the greater the costly mouthpiece, the same being but gently pressed against the lips at the orifice of the inhaled vapour; My Lord, I say, holding this fair oval of clear amber before him, turned, through the interpreter, the discourse to considerations of the occult nature of that substance whereof it was fashioned; declaring, among other items, his incredulity touching the strange allegement that amber was sometimes found with bees glued up therein as in their own crystallised honey, or, if not bees, then fleas and flies. With the wondrous sedate courtesy of all the grandees in these parts, the Azem with his silvery spade-beard, sitting cross-legged on the green silken cushions; he, though never understanding a word of My Lord’s English, yet very gravely and attentively, as before, heard him out; him, My Lord, first, I mean, leaning over toward him, his hand to his ear, for, certes, he was somewhat deaf, being in years; leaning over toward him, I say, and thereafter relaxing and falling back somewhat on the cushions, and so giving another sort of heed to the interpreter; who, having delivered his burden, the Azem did nothing but give a little clap with his hands, and, as it were one of the painted manikins in the great clock at Strasbourg, a pretty little page issued from a sort of draped closet near by; to whom his master made a sign; whereat the page brought to My Lord the aforesaid amber vase, empty, and put it into his two hands; who made as if surprised; and after scrutinising it, and turning it round and round, and discovering the imbedded relics, affected great admiration at being so promptly and in that tacit manner confuted in his misbelief; and much did he laud the beauty of the vase as well; insomuch that the interpreter, a precise clerk in his careful vocation, verily he seemed as sore put to it to render My Lord.

But if herein, and all along, My Lord’s purpose was so to work on the Azem as that he, seeing his great pleasure in the vase, might be drawn to make a gift of it; I say, if this were My Lord’s intent, it prospered not to the fulfilment, forasmuch as it was now the Azem’s turn to say how much he likewise, he himself, esteemed the vase, declaring that at such rate did he prize it, he would not barter it, no, not for a certain villa he spake of, though mightily he coveted the same. For besides the beauty of the vessel and the rare sculpture on it, and its being incomparably the biggest piece of amber known in those parts; besides all this, it was the very vase, he avouched—and with a kind of ardour strange to note in one so much upon his turbaned dignity—the very vase, in sooth, that being on a bridal festival filled with roses in the palace of the old Shaz Gold-beak at Shiraz, had tempted their great poet, one Lugar-Lips, to a closer inspection, when tenderly dividing the flowers one from another, and noting the little anatomies congealed in the amber, he was prompted to the inditing of certain verses; for which cause the vase thenceforth forever was inestimable. To which extravagance My Lord listened with his wonted civility, nay, and with a special graciousness, but for all that a bit sadly too, meseemed, and would now again have swerved the discourse; but the Azem was beforehand, and bade the page bring him something from a silver-bound chest near by in an alcove. It was a vellum book, about the bigness of a prayer-book for church-going, but very rich with jewelled clasps, and writ by some famous scribe in the fair Persian text, and illuminated withal like unto the great Popish parchment folios I have seen. And this book, surely of great cost, the Azem with his own hands right nobly did present to My Lord, putting his finger on a certain page whereon were traced those verses aforesaid.

But, shortly after, some sherbet and sweetmeats being served, and the Azem’s own mules being at the garden gate, and, the more to honour us, with gorgeous new trappings; our train withdrew in the same state as when we entered, that is, the one great captain-soldier leading, with a mighty truncheon in his hand, and his troop making a lane through which we proceeded to the saddles, they the while salaaming and paying extreme obeisance to My Lord, which, indeed, was but their bounden duty, for he was an Englishman and my noble master.

Now a Greek renegado, one long dwelling in Persia, a scholar, and at whiles employed by My Lord, he being expert in divers tongues of both continents, and learned in the chirography of the Persian and Arabic; this polyglot infidel—the more shame to him for turning his back on his Saviour—he being at the embassy one day, which was I know not what kind of strange holiday with these folk; My Lord for his recreation, and by way of challenge, being a little merry, as was his wont sometimes for a brief space after dinner; he commanded the Greek to put those verses into English rhyme if he could, and on the instant, or as soon soever as might be. Upon which the Greek said: ‘My Lord, I will try; but I pray thee give me wine’—glancing at the table where remained certain nickel flasks of the choice vintages both of Persia and Cyprus; ‘Yes, wine, My Lord,’ he repeated. ‘Now,’ demanded my master severely. ‘Bethink thee, now, My Lord,’ quoth he, saluting; ‘this same Lugar-Lip’s verses being all grapes, or veritably saturated with the ripe juice thereof, there is no properly rendering them without a cup or two of the same; and, behold, My Lord, I am sober.’

My master, after a moment seeming to debate in his mind whether this proceeded from a strange familiar impudence in the varlet, or from an honest superstition however silly, for he delivered himself very soberly and discreetly, commanded wine to be served him; when the renegado, quaffing like a good fellow his cup or two, which were indeed five, for I took the tally; he, I say, quaffing at whiles, and all the time holding the vellum book in one hand—and, sooth, but one hand he had, the other having been smitten off by a scimetar, whether in honourable fray, or by the executioner, I know not; he, ever and anon scanning the page, humming and hooing to himself and swaying his body, like the dervishes hereabouts, at last after this mighty ado, sang—he scarce said it—the interpreted verses; which were these:—

Wherein, in the ultimate verse, Lugar-Lips did particularise, doubtless, one of the twain in the relievo of the little medallion on one side of the vase, of which cunning piece I have in the foregoing made account.

‘And is that all?’ said My Lord, composedly, but scarce cheerfully, when the renegado had made an end; ‘and is that all? And call you that a crushing from the grape? the black grape, I wis’; there checking himself, as a wise man will do, catching himself tripping in an indiscreet sincerity; which to cover, peradventure, he, suddenly rising, retired to his chamber, and though commanding his visage somewhat, yet in pace and figure showing the spirit within sadly distraught; forsooth, the last Michaelmas, his birthday, he was threescore and three years old, and in privy fear, as I knew who long was near him, of a certain sudden malady whereof his father and grandfather before him had died about that age. But for my part I always esteemed it a mighty weakness in so great a man to let the ribald wit of a vain ballader, and he a heathen, make heavy his heart. For me who am but a small one, I was in secret pleased with the lax pleasantry of this Lugar-Lips, but in such sort as one is tickled with the profane capering of a mountebank at Bartholomew’s Fair by Thames. Howbeit, had I been, God knows, of equal reverend years with my master, and subject by probable inheritance to the like sudden malady, peradventure I myself in that case might have waxed sorrowful, doubting whether the grape was not indeed the black grape, as he phrased it, wherefrom that vain balladry had been distilled.

But now no more hereof, nor of the amber vase, which like unto some little man in great place hath been made overmuch of, as the judicious reader hereof may opine.